- US DOJ sues to block ethics punishments of administration lawyers
Source: Philadelphia Inquirer
“The Justice Department on Wednesday filed a lawsuit against the District of Columbia Bar over its efforts to discipline Trump administration lawyers, escalating the department’s feud with legal ethics authorities. The lawsuit defends Jeffrey Clark, a government lawyer in the first Trump administration who sought to undo the results of the 2020 presidential race, and Ed Martin, a current senior Justice Department official. The suit was filed by Todd Blanche, the acting attorney general, and Stanley E. Woodward Jr., the No. 3 official at the Justice Department…. The lawsuit centers on the long-running battle over the D.C. Bar’s effort to disbar Clark, an environmental lawyer who had no formal role in investigating elections, over his push to promote Trump’s baseless assertions of fraud in Joe Biden’s electoral victory in 2020.” (05/14/26)
https://www.inquirer.com/politics/nation/trump-administration-lawyers-ethics-bar-20260514.html
- UK: Health secretary resigns in scathing letter, setting up challenge to Starmer’s leadership
Source: CBS News
“Efforts to unseat British Prime Minister Keir Starmer broke out into open rebellion Thursday, with one potential rival resigning from the Cabinet and another clearing the way for her to enter any future leadership contest. Health Secretary Wes Streeting became the first senior minister to quit Starmer’s Cabinet in what is expected to be a precursor to challenging his leadership. … Streeting, whose political ambitions have long been known, is considered one of a handful of people who could try to unseat Starmer. … Another likely challenger, former Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner, said Thursday that she had reached an agreement with tax authorities to clear up questions about her taxes that forced her to leave the Cabinet last September.” (05/14/26)
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/uk-health-secretary-resigns-prime-minister-keir-starmer-challenge/
- US weekly jobless claims increase moderately, labor market remains stable
Source: Reuters
“The number of Americans filing claims for unemployment benefits increased moderately last week, pointing to a stable labor market even as rising energy prices from the war with Iran drive up inflation. Initial claims for state unemployment benefits rose 12,000 to a seasonally adjusted 211,000 for the week ended May 9, the Labor Department said on Thursday. Economists polled by Reuters had forecast 205,000 claims for the latest week. … The government reported on Wednesday that producer prices recorded their biggest increase in four years in April. There are concerns that shortages and rising inflation could cause layoffs in some industries.” (05/13/26)
- Federal judge blocks US sanctions against UN rapporteur Francesca Albanese
Source: Al Jazeera [Qatari state media]
“A federal judge has temporarily blocked United States sanctions against Francesca Albanese, a United Nations expert on the occupied Palestinian territory. UN Human Rights Council Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese was sanctioned in July 2025 after she publicly criticised Washington’s policy on Israel’s genocidal war against Palestinians in Gaza. Albanese’s husband and daughter filed a lawsuit in February against the Trump administration over the sanctions. It argued that the sanctions were an effort to punish Albanese for bringing attention to Israel’s rights abuses against Palestinians. In his court order on Wednesday, US District Judge Richard Leon granted a preliminary injunction against the sanctions. He found that the Trump administration sought to regulate her speech because of the ‘idea or message expressed.'” (05/14/26)
- ME: Vance set to speak about fraud investigations ahead of primary election
Source: Los Angeles Daily News
“Vice President JD Vance is slated to make an appearance in Maine on Thursday to highlight the Trump administration’s efforts to combat fraud ahead of the state’s primary elections for several high-profile races. Vance, who chairs the administration’s anti-fraud task force, is scheduled to deliver remarks at Bangor International Airport, the White House and the Maine Republican Party announced. The vice president, who is seen as a potential GOP candidate for president in 2028, has been promoting the work of the task force as he has campaigned for Republican candidates in recent months. But Thursday’s visit is the first that has been expressly billed as a stop to talk about the fraud-fighting efforts rather than the economic-focused message he’s delivered in other visits.” (05/14/26)
https://www.dailynews.com/2026/05/14/jd-vance-maine-fraud-investigations/
- Honda records its first-ever annual loss on a costly EV strategy
Source: Seattle Times
“Honda racked up a 423.9 billion yen ($2.7 billion) loss Thursday, the first-ever full year loss for the Japanese automaker, acknowledging heavy costs for its electric-vehicle plans, stemming from President Donald Trump’s pro-U.S. [sic] policies. The Japanese automaker said losses related to its EV operations are estimated to total 2.5 trillion yen ($16 billion), incurred mostly in the fiscal year just ended and the current fiscal year. Analysts say Honda Motor Co. might have been too ambitious too fast, when many markets weren’t ready. As a result, Honda abandoned many of its plans for EV models, including those in the works in a joint venture with Sony Corp.” (05/14/26)
- US House fails to do its job on Trump’s illegal Iran war … again
Source: CBS News
“The House voted for a third time against acting as a check on President Trump’s military powers in Iran, even as a growing number of Republicans express concern about the prolonged conflict. Thursday’s vote on a Democratic resolution to rein in Mr. Trump’s authority was 212-212, falling just short of a majority. Originally introduced on March 4, the measure as written would have directed the president to remove U.S. forces from hostilities within 30 days of the start of the war, which began on Feb. 28. … The war passed a critical deadline on May 1 under the War Powers Resolution of 1973, which says the president must remove armed forces from hostilities after 60 days if Congress has not authorized the war. The 60-day clock started once the president sent formal notification to Congress of the hostilities on March 2.” [editor’s note: the 0-day clock started the instant he started a war without the required congressional declaration – TLK] (05/14/26)
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/house-iran-war-powers-resolution/
- US Senators approve withholding their own pay during government shutdowns
Source: SFGate
“Senators unanimously approved a resolution Thursday to withhold their pay during government shutdowns, an attempt to make federal closures financially painful for lawmakers after a string of record-breaking impasses in the past year. The bipartisan support for the measure comes at a time when federal closures have become longer and more frequent, frustrating lawmakers who say there should be punishment when Congress fails at its most basic legislative duty. Under the resolution, senators’ pay would be withheld by the secretary of the Senate whenever a government shutdown affects one or more agencies, then released once funding is restored. It will take effect the day after the Nov. 3 general election. ‘Shutting down government should not be our default solution to our refusal to work out our issues and our differences,’ said Sen. John Kennedy [R-LA], the bill’s sponsor, in a floor speech Wednesday.” (05/14/26)
https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/senators-vote-to-withhold-their-own-pay-during-22259128.php
- Latvia: Prime minister resigns after controversy over stray Ukrainian drones
Source: ABC News
“Latvian center-right Prime Minister Evika Silina announced her resignation on Thursday, after the Progressives Party, her left-leaning coalition partner, pulled support from the government and left her without a majority. Her resignation came after Latvia’s Defense Minister Andris Spruds, from the Progressives Party, was forced to resign last week over the government’s handling of multiple incidents involving stray drones suspected to be from Ukraine crossing into Latvian territory. Silina said at the time Spruds had lost her trust and that of the public.” (05/14/26)
- Are Democrats Now the Party of Free Markets? Don’t Bet on It.
Source: Reason
by Stephanie Slade“Listening to two prominent progressives highlight the cronyism and inefficiencies of government bureaucracy that libertarians have been shouting about for decades was equal parts refreshing and infuriating. But if you were tempted to hope those realizations would bring them around to genuinely libertarian conclusions, you would be disappointed. Ultimately, as the second half of the podcast made clear, [Ezra] Klein and his allies support streamlining government because they hope to make it easier for government to do big, ambitious things: nationwide high-speed rail, federal housing projects, Medicare for All. They are not trying to get government out of the way so people can thrive; they want government itself to thrive. That distinction is the main problem with the hypothesis that Democrats will soon be the party of free markets and limited government.” (05/14/26)
https://reason.com/2026/05/14/are-democrats-now-the-party-of-free-markets-dont-bet-on-it/
- “Nearest Nickel” Makes Sense … But Why a Law?
Source: Garrison Center
by Thomas L Knapp“On May 11, a new law went into effect in Florida, ‘allowing’ businesses to round the amounts charged for cash purchases to the nearest nickel. Really? Nothing more important than this for our masters in Tallahassee to spend their time on? Don’t get me wrong. The practice in question makes sense …. But why on Earth would merchants need a law to ‘allow’ this? … Even when framed as ‘voluntary’ — as this one is — unnecessary laws ‘allowing’ behaviors already unquestionably ‘allowed’ (by common sense and conventional morality) tend to nudge the public toward an ‘everything not required is forbidden’ mindset in which we instinctively seek permission from our rulers for every action, trivial or momentous.” (05/14/26)
- Welfare-Warfare State Reform Is Not Freedom
Source: Future of Freedom Foundation
by Jacob G Hornberger“The libertarian movement can be divided into two basic groups: libertarians who call for reforming welfare-warfare state programs and libertarians who call for dismantling welfare-warfare state programs. I fall within the latter group. Why? Because I want to be free. Reform doesn’t get me freedom. At best it gets me a better serfdom. That’s nice, but it’s not want I want for the rest of my life. I want to be free, and only by dismantling infringements on freedom can I attain genuine freedom.” (05/14/26)
https://www.fff.org/2026/05/14/welfare-warfare-state-reform-is-not-freedom/
- When Killing Becomes Commonplace
Source: Antiwar.com
by Andrew P Napolitano“Last week, when the Pentagon resumed its attacks on small boats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific Ocean, the media barely noticed. The U.S. military has now destroyed 56 vessels and killed 190 persons. The killings began in September 2025 and have continued to this month. … Killing survivors is expressly prohibited by federal law as well as by the Uniform Code of Military Justice. And, of course, ordering the killing of innocents is always unlawful. So, the Pentagon made two changes. It produced more lethal strikes so as not to be burdened with the problem of survivors, and it either stopped killing survivors or stopped revealing that it killed them.” (05/14/26)
https://original.antiwar.com/andrew-p-napolitano/2026/05/13/when-killing-becomes-commonplace/
- The “Trade Deficit” is a Misnomer
Source: EconLog
by Jon Murphy“The United States, like most other countries, use a method of double-entry accounting to track certain aggregate statistics known as National Income Accounting. One of the statistics tracked is the balance of trade. The balance of trade reports the difference between imports and exports. … The connotations of the words ‘surplus’ and ‘deficit’ (coupled with the accounting conventions of pluses and minus) give the impression to those who do not understand the balance of trade that deficits are bad while surpluses are good. But, digging a little into the accounting shows that 1) ‘deficits’ and ‘surpluses’ are value-free and 2) referring to these as ‘trade deficits/surpluses’ is something of a misnomer.” (05/14/26)
https://www.econlib.org/econlog/the-trade-deficit-is-a-misnomer
- AOC’s war on billionaires twists America’s birth into a socialist myth
Source: Fox News Forum
by Jonathan Turley“Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez [D-NY] is fast becoming the greatest fabulist since Aesop. Recently, Ocasio-Cortez insisted that true billionaires are a capitalist myth since ‘you can’t earn a billion dollars.’ However, her greatest work of fiction may be her insistence that the Framers fought against billionaires and would have joined her and other socialists in seeking to eradicate them today. Bertrand Russell once noted that ‘there is something feeble and a little contemptible’ about those ‘who cannot face the perils of life without the help of comfortable myths.’ The American left has long peddled such ‘comfortable myths’ as the wealthy ‘not paying their fair share’ of taxes. The top 1% of income earners pay over 40% of federal taxes, and that percentage goes up to 70% for the top 10%.” (05/14/26)
- “The Library is One of the Best Libertarian Arguments for Limited Government”
Source: Washington Monthly
by David Masciotra“John Chrastka of EveryLibrary, which fights for library budgets and against book bans, discusses libraries, their central role in our society, censorship — and those drag-queen story hours.” (05/14/26)
https://washingtonmonthly.com/2026/05/14/library-book-bans-limited-government/
- How Not to Measure AI Productivity
Source: The Daily Economy
by Walter Donway“Organizations often mistake measurable activity for meaningful achievement. AI productivity metrics confuse computation costs with added value.” (05/14/26)
https://thedailyeconomy.org/article/how-not-to-measure-ai-productivity/
- The Charity Trap
Source: Foundation for Economic Education
by Mani Basharzad“One of the first attempts by the second Trump administration to cut government waste was massive cuts and layoffs at USAID. Now, the same administration is pressuring the United Nations to adopt more trade-focused policies rather than aid-focused ones — the ‘trade not aid’ strategy. While it is not obvious how Trump’s tariffs are helping poor nations through trade, we still need to rethink foreign aid.” (05/14/26)
- Ruth Lopez Spoke Up for Due Process; Now She’s Detained Without Charges
Source: Our Future
by Sulma Arias“Who of us has the right to live without fear? This is the question human rights lawyer Ruth Lopez has asked fearlessly in El Salvador — the country of my birth — for decades. It’s a question we all need to ask ourselves in the United States as well. For speaking boldly, Ruth is now in prison. She’s been held without trial since May 18, 2025 — now a year ago — when she was torn from her bed by police and arrested without any investigation or judicial warrant. Ruth has since had minimal contact with her family and lawyers. Ruth’s crime? She opposed corruption. When Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele signed a secret agreement with the Trump administration to accept $4.7 million for the illegal transfer of more than 200 U.S. deportees to El Salvador’s CECOT mega-prison, Ruth spoke up to defend their basic rights.” (05/14/26)
https://ourfuture.org/20260514/ruth-lopez-spoke-up-for-due-process-now-shes-detained-without-charges
- Republicans Cannot Gerrymander Senate Races
Source: The Contrarian
by Jennifer Rubin“Democrats’ prospects are actually improving with time.” (05/14/26)
https://www.contrariannews.org/p/republicans-cannot-gerrymander-senate
- What Silicon Valley can learn from the Eastern Establishment
Source: hypertext
by Geoff Kabaservice“There was a time when Silicon Valley and the tech industry seemed — not cool, exactly, but vaguely countercultural and brashly anti-establishment. That was the point of Mark Zuckerberg wearing pajamas to an investor pitch, or tech execs spurning coats and ties: to emphasize that they were unlike traditional elites in every way. They consciously presented themselves as rebels whose products would liberate humanity from the old constraints of authority and tradition. Back in the early 2000s, it would have seemed far-fetched to imagine that these former outsiders would become an elite themselves.” (05/14/26)
https://hypertext.niskanencenter.org/p/what-silicon-valley-can-learn-from
- AI Won’t Necessarily Lead to Mass Unemployment: The Case of the Financial Industry
Source: CounterPunch
by Dean Baker“There is widespread concern that AI will lead to mass unemployment in the years ahead. As I and others have pointed out, we have yet to see any evidence of this in the data on job growth or productivity. But maybe we just have to wait a bit longer. But the idea that AI will eliminate all the jobs ignores the ways that creative entrepreneurs can develop new industries that require hundreds of thousands, or even millions of employees. These new industries may contribute nothing to well-being, but they create jobs. The best example of this sort of waste is the financial industry.” (05/14/26)
- China summit is Trump’s best chance to choke off Iran’s terror cash
Source: New York Post
by Elaine Dezenski & Max Meizlish“A bombshell report this week laid bare a startling truth: Hong Kong is the lifeline for the Iranian regime and its terrorist proxies. Hong Kong-registered shell companies are funneling billions of dollars in illicit oil revenue, along with weapons technology and surveillance tools, to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, fueling Tehran’s repressive military machine. But more than two months into the war, not one of Iran’s most important financial enablers — in Hong Kong or anywhere else in China — has been taken offline. Donald Trump and Xi Jinping shaking hands, with the US and Chinese flags behind them. It’s a glaring loophole in President Trump’s ‘Economic Fury’ and ‘Maximum Pressure’ campaigns that he’s promised will break the regime. So this week, as the president meets with Xi Jinping in Beijing, he should present the Chinese Communist Party with the bill for its continued support of Tehran’s terror.” (05/13/26)
https://nypost.com/2026/05/13/opinion/china-summit-is-trumps-chance-to-choke-irans-terror-cash/
- When Businesspeople Run Government, the Government Doesn’t Become a Business
Source: Reason
by Veronique de Rugy“Central planning from Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, President Donald Trump, and others reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of what makes private markets work.” (05/14/26)
- Bullet Train or Bay Bridge?
Source: Independent Institute
by K Lloyd Billingsley“The contest for California’s biggest disaster may soon be decided.” (05/14/26)
https://www.independent.org/article/2026/05/14/bullet-train-or-bay-bridge/
- We Need a Department of Peace, Not $1.5 Trillion for More War
Source: Common Dreams
by Robert C Koehler“It’s hard to avoid noticing, and internally screaming over, the Trump administration’s proposed military budget upgrade to $1.5 trillion annually, as though the present trillion-dollar annual gift to the end of the world weren’t enough. It’s not just the proposed taxpayer bleed. It’s the collective assumption that ‘self-defense’ requires an ever-present readiness to kill lots of people, and beyond that the utter certainty that we have soulless enemies out there who want what we have, hate our freedoms, and will take what they can the moment we relax. This is just the way it is. No questions allowed. And our enemies aren’t pussycats. One of them, for instance, is China. … Nothing holds a country together like a good enemy.” (05/14/26)
- Can Socialists Support Commerce But Not Capitalism?
Source: The Daily Economy
by Christopher Freiman“Many socialists condemn trade barriers while supporting bans on wage labor and private ownership. Can that logic be reconciled?” (05/14/26)
https://thedailyeconomy.org/article/can-socialists-support-commerce-but-not-capitalism/
- Return of the Next Pandemic Script
Source: Brownstone Institute
by Yaffa Shir-Raz“On the surface, an international cruise ship experiencing serious illnesses and deaths during a voyage would seem destined to become an immediate global news story. But that did not happen. Only weeks later, on May 1, the story suddenly received intense international coverage. Within a short time, headlines around the world warned of a ‘plague ship’ at sea, passengers from 23 countries under monitoring, quarantine measures, and fears of human-to-human transmission. After the Covid years, and the way the crisis unfolded in early 2020, the sense of déjà vu was almost unavoidable. … This time, the timing is particularly striking. On May 1, three days before the MV Hondius story received widespread international media attention, the World Health Organization announced yet another one-year delay in negotiations over the PABS annex of the Pandemic Agreement.” (05/14/26)
https://brownstone.org/articles/return-of-the-next-pandemic-script/
- Pope Leo is right. Trump’s war in Iran fails a test.
Source: Washington Post
by Ramesh Ponnuru“Trump has made next to no attempt to justify his Iran policy using the traditional criteria for just war, and sometimes he broadcasts contempt for the idea that war could be subject to moral evaluation. When he threatens to end Iran’s civilization, it can’t plausibly be spun as anything but placing large-scale war crimes on the table. Though just-war theory is frequently associated with the Catholic Church, its influence extends to non-Catholics and it rests on no distinctively Christian premises. It holds that war is permissible when (among other conditions) it serves a just cause, is declared by a legitimate authority, has a reasonable chance of success and can be expected to do more good than harm.
There is plenty of room to debate when these conditions have been met, but they clearly rule out some wars.” (05/14/26) - Mike Pence, Pretend Lifeguard of Conservatism; Voters Already Left His Pool
Source: American Greatness
by Steve Cortes“Mike Pence anointed himself to stand athwart the populist Right with a whistle in his mouth, screaming for conservatives to ‘get out of the pool.’ The imagery fits him perfectly. Pence increasingly resembles that obnoxious childhood lifeguard we all remember — the self-important scold, high on perceived power, perched way above everyone else. As such, Pence is convinced that enforcing his rules matters more than understanding why people jumped into the water in the first place. From his perch at CNN studios and establishment think tanks, Pence now lectures conservatives about ‘traditional principles,’ warning Republicans against populism and urging a return to the old GOP orthodoxy. … Pence demands that Republicans engage in ‘soul-searching’ over populism. Fine. Let’s do exactly that.” (05/14/26)
- Defending Taiwan
Source: Law & Liberty
by Mike Watson“Deterring China is about more than chip manufacturing and foreign democracy.” (05/14/26)
- Socialists Are Reaping a Bountiful Political Harvest while They Create Havoc
Source: Ludwig von Mises Institute
by William L Anderson“There is no doubt that socialists are doing very well in the current electoral climate. Zohran Mamdani’s recent victory in the New York City mayoral election has electrified the socialist movement across the country, which also includes the election of Katie Wilson as mayor of Seattle. … Indeed, Bernie Sanders lost narrowly in the 2016 and 2020 Democratic presidential primaries, and it certainly is not beyond the imagination to say American voters might well have sent him to the White House in either of those elections, had he won the nomination. … One might think, given the electoral successes of leftwing Democrats, that their policies have been successful in transforming the economic and social landscapes of the cities and states where they govern. Think again.” (05/14/26)
- Try Liberty with Steven Nekhaila, 05/14/26
Source: Try Liberty with Steven Nekhaila
“When the Primary Source Disappears, So Does the Truth | Ford Fischer.” (05/14/26)
- The Libertarian Angle, 05/14/26
Source: Future of Freedom Foundation
“The Folly of Trump’s Trade Summit in China.” (05/15/26)
- TAC Right Now, 05/14/26
Source: The American Conservative
“Andrew Day and Harrison Berger talk to geopolitical analyst Brandon Weichert about the Iran war, President Trump’s visit to China, and the Russian thinker urging Vladimir Putin to escalate against Europe.” (05/14/26)
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/tac-right-now-will-china-push-trump-to-end-iran-war/
- Rising, 05/14/26
Source: The Hill
“Fauci buried lab leak evidence, CIA analyst reveals!” (05/14/26)
- Ron Paul Liberty Report, 05/14/26
Source: Ron Paul Liberty Report
“Trump In China — Who Has The Upper Hand?” (05/14/26)
- Radio Atlantic, 05/14/26
Source: The Atlantic
“America Has Always Had a Gerrymandering Problem. This Is New.” (05/14/26)
- The Fifth Column, episode 557
Source: The Fifth Column
“When Everyone Stops Pretending w/ Steven Pinker.” (05/14/26)
https://www.wethefifth.com/p/when-everyone-stops-pretending-w
- The Daily Blast With Greg Sargent, 05/14/26
Source: The New Republic
“Trump Iran Tirade Visibly Rattles GOPers as Leaks Expose New Blunders.” (05/14/26)